As a nurse, I have personally and professionally cared for many suicidal people over decades including some who were terminally ill. To my knowledge, none of these people went on to die by suicide except one-my own daughter.

Almost nine years ago, my 30 year old daughter Marie died by suicide using an assisted suicide technique she found after searching suicide and assisted suicide websites and reading assisted suicide supporter Derek Humphry’s book “Final Exit”.

Marie was a wonderful woman who achieved a degree in engineering despite struggling off and on with substance abuse and thoughts of suicide for 16 years. She was in an outpatient behavioral health program at the time of her suicide. Her suicide was my worst fear and it devastated all of us in the family as well as her friends. Two people close to Marie also became suicidal after her death but were fortunately saved.

So it was with mixed feelings that I participated in the suicide prevention walk but now I am glad I did.

“WORKING WITH DECISIONALLY CAPABLE PATIENTS WHO ARE DETERMINED TO END THEIR OWN LIVES”

I finally finished reading this article after the walk and found that while the authors of this Journal of Clinical Psychiatry article insist that they are only discussing “decisionally capable” people with “advanced medical illness”, they write:

“The 24% increase in US suicide rates from 1999 to 2014 has led to greater efforts to identify, prevent, and intervene in situations associated with suicidality. While the desire to kill oneself is not synonymous with a mental illness, 80%–90% of completed suicides are associated with a mental disorder, most commonly depression. Understandably, psychiatrists and other clinicians face strong moral, cultural, and professional pressures to do everything possible to avert suicide. Hidden within these statistics are unknown numbers of individuals determined to end their lives, often in the context of a life-limiting physical illness, who have no mental disorder or who, despite having a mental disorder, were nevertheless seemingly rational and decisionally capable and in whom the mental disorder did not seem to influence the desire to hasten death.”

Tragically, the authors also state:

“In reviewing the either sparse or dated literature in this field, surveys from the United States and Canada support that most psychiatrists believe that PAD (physician aid in dying, a euphemism for assisted suicide) should be legal and is ethical in some cases and that they might want the option for themselves.”

And

“Although we see ‘assisted death’ as an option of last resort, we instead ask whether on certain occasions psychiatrists might appropriately not seek to prevent selected decisionally capable individuals from ending their own lives.” (All emphasis added)

This flies in the face of long-standing professional suicide prevention and treatment principles.

“In general, suicide and physician aid in dying are conceptually, medically, and legally different phenomena, with an undetermined amount of overlap between these two categories” but “Such deaths should not be considered to be cases of suicideand are therefore a matter outside the central focus of the AAS.” (Emphasis added)

The next day, I was able to contact a policy person at their Washington, DC office and, unlike other suicide prevention group representatives I have contacted in the past, I found this woman surprisingly interested and receptive to the idea that we should not discriminate against certain people when it comes to suicide prevention and treatment. She even asked for my contact information.

Of course, the AFSP may decide to exclude potential assisted suicide victims like other organizations have done but at least I tried and that’s the best tribute I can give to my daughter now.

6 thoughts on “No Suicide Discrimination!”

It bothers me that the same people who would fight to protect my life if I were suicidal and able-bodied would not fight for me if I were suicidal now that I have a disability. That sends the message that I am less valuable and my life is not important. It’s a terrible message to get, and it doesn’t help my battle with suicidal impulses.

While the desire to kill oneself is not synonymous with a mental illness, 80%–90% of completed suicides are associated with a mental disorder, most commonly depression. Understandably, psychiatrists and other clinicians face strong moral, cultural, and professional pressures to do everything possible to avert suicide. Hidden within these statistics are unknown numbers of individuals determined to end their lives, often in the context of a life-limiting physical illness, who have no mental disorder or who, despite having a mental disorder, were nevertheless seemingly rational and decisionally capable and in whom the mental disorder did not seem to influence the desire to hasten death.”

How do I contact this policy person? I am a person with a “life-limiting physical illness” and also a mental illness. I have attempted suicide in the past, before I became disabled with a physical illness. I can’t help but wonder how I will be treated if my bipolar disorder again overwhelms me. Now that I am physically disabled as well. It is wrong to have a different criteria for saving the lives of those who are disabled. it is ableism in its worst form, and I want to speak out against it and try to convince people.